West Yorkshire 2017

This is HMICFRS’ fourth PEEL (police effectiveness, efficiency and legitimacy) assessment of West Yorkshire Police. PEEL is designed to give the public information about how their local police force is performing in several important areas, in a way that is comparable both across England and Wales, and year on year. The assessment is updated throughout the year with our inspection findings and reports.

The extent to which the force is effective at keeping people safe and reducing crime is not yet graded.

The extent to which the force is efficient at keeping people safe and reducing crime is good.

The extent to which the force is legitimate at keeping people safe and reducing crime is good.

The efficiency and legitimacy inspection findings are published below.

Effectiveness

How effective is the force at keeping people safe and reducing crime?

Efficiency

How efficient is the force at keeping people safe and reducing crime?

Last updated 09/11/2017

Good

West Yorkshire Police is judged to be good in the efficiency with which it keeps people safe and reduces crime. Our overall judgment this year is the same as last year. The force is judged to be good for its understanding of demand; its use of resources to manage demand is assessed to be good; and its planning for future demand is also judged to be good.

West Yorkshire Police has a comprehensive strategic planning framework, centred on understanding demand for its services. The force conducts a yearly strategic assessment, taking into consideration many sources of information. Its programme of change has reviewed inefficient internal processes, resulting in greater efficiency for the force. The force has a strong approach to change management and has identified many areas for review and transformation. It has a good understanding of its workforce skills and capabilities. Its strategic workforce planning group reviews workforce data each month, analysing capacity and operational capability for vacancies, budgeted posts and training gaps, informing and shaping workforce and training plans. The force is recruiting new officers to fill existing gaps and increase capacity. Further consideration of how the force can develop its understanding of its workforce’s leadership skills and capabilities in the medium and long term is now needed. This should go beyond the ‘hard’ police leadership skills of command and control and encompass the qualities and values of what it means to be a leader in West Yorkshire Police.

The force has engaged in several collaborative ventures, including the Yorkshire and the Humber police collaborations. West Yorkshire Police is continually exploring new ways of working with partner agencies in order to reduce demand further, reduce resource requirements and improve service outcomes.

The strategic planning framework ensures that financial resources and the workforce plan are aligned with the force’s understanding of demand. The force has a comprehensive ICT strategy, aligned with the workforce and service plans. Its medium-term financial and workforce plans are based on credible and sensible assumptions. It has a clear understanding of the savings required over the next three years; these are based on prudent assumptions. The force has opted to achieve these savings through fundamental, organisation-wide change while maintaining recruitment.

Legitimacy

How legitimate is the force at keeping people safe and reducing crime?

Last updated 12/12/2017

Good

West Yorkshire Police is judged to be good at how legitimately it keeps people safe and reduces crime. For the areas of legitimacy we looked at this year, our overall judgment is the same as last year. The force is good at treating all of the people it serves with fairness and respect. It is also good at ensuring its workforce behaves ethically and lawfully and it is good at treating its workforce with fairness and respect.

West Yorkshire Police understands the importance of treating people fairly and with respect. West Yorkshire Police’s values are underpinned by the Code of Ethics, which is embedded in force policy, procedure and training. The force has a good strategic approach to stop and search and use of force, with an effective training package, scrutiny and governance of the use of these powers.

The force strives to make sure that its workforce behaves ethically and lawfully. Senior leaders regularly refer their decisions to both internal and external ethics committees that provide robust oversight and critical feedback. The force is doing positive work to make the complaints process accessible and easy for the public to use, and it generally provides timely and meaningful updates to complainants on the progress of their case. The workforce has a good understanding of what discrimination is and how to identify, respond to and investigate reports of discrimination.

West Yorkshire Police uses both formal and informal methods to work with and seek challenge from the workforce. In its recent recruitment of police officers, the force has taken the opportunity to address black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) disproportionality. The force is continuing to develop a comprehensive approach to understanding staff wellbeing. A clear strategy for wellbeing is in place, with organisation-wide, district and departmental plans. The force has effective and well-established structures and processes in place to manage and develop the individual performance of officers and staff. The force participates in direct entry and fast track schemes, and has a talent progression scheme to identify members of the workforce with high potential to become senior leaders. Promotion processes were perceived to be fair by officers and staff we spoke to during the inspection.

Other inspections

How well has the force performed in our other inspections?

In addition to the three core PEEL pillars, HMICFRS carries out inspections of a wide range of policing activity throughout the year. Some of these are conducted alongside the PEEL inspections (for instance, our 2016 leadership assessment); others are joint inspections.

Findings from these inspections are published separately to the main PEEL reports, but are taken into account when producing the rounded assessment of each force's performance.

Police and crime plan priorities

My Police and Crime Plan 2016-21 sets the strategic direction for police and partners in West Yorkshire and is centred around joint working, including with our communities, to achieve the following outcomes: tackle crime and anti-social behaviour; safeguard vulnerable people; make sure criminal justice works for communities; and support victims and witnesses.

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The Plan was produced after extensive consultation with partners and West Yorkshire Police, but also with people across West Yorkshire and the 16 priority areas included in the Plan are: burglary; child sexual abuse; community cohesion; cyber crime; domestic abuse; drug and alcohol misuse; hate crime; honour based abuse; human trafficking and modern slavery; major threats; mental health; missing people; radicalisation; road safety; sexual abuse; and the Strategic Policing Requirement.

More detailed ‘Priority Plans’ will be developed to provide further direction on what and how we want to deliver and I will continue to bring partners together to make sure we ‘keep communities safe and feeling safe’.